Of Jericho, Canaanites, and DNA

“Archaeologists have discovered that a series of earthquakes swept through the Eastern Mediterranean, including where Jericho stood, in around 1250 BC, and certainly brought walls crumbling down. However, the dates don’t match with the time Joshua was supposedly conquering the land. Maybe the memory of the destruction of the towns inspired scribes to write about a great warrior who conquered cities with God’s will. Or perhaps the catastrophic collapse of the old world through the earthquakes gave way to opportunism and Israelite groups took advantage of the destruction of the existing Canaanite cities and began to settle in Israel.

There is a twist to the story. Recent DNA research shows that the Canaanites and Israelites were not just similar in their cultures, they were genetically identical. Perhaps the Israelites did not conquer the land at all - they were there all along.”

Very similar to the challenges to The Book of Mormon and the DNA issues surrounding that work of fiction. The Mormon church also has a problem with facts that refute their bogus history. Several scholars were excommunicated and several professors were fired from BYU because the results of their research went against Mormon scripture. Similarly, there have been numerous cries of antisemitism against the archaeologists and geneticists who revealed the above quoted results. God knows that it is a crime for research to disprove someone’s long held myth.

Cue the trolls….someone needs to renounce this tightly conducted archaeological and genetic research for the truth mongering that it truly is. Damn the scientists and their audacity in not supporting our wacky religion.

“Most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan - they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt…no violent conquest of Canaan. The early Israelites were - irony of ironies - themselves originally Canaanites!

The conquest of Canaan by Joshua could not have happened [as] described in the Bible. Most of the towns…either weren’t inhabited, didn’t exist or were conquered at wildly different times.” —Finkelstein and Silberman

[quote author=“Cooper”]Perhaps the Israelites did not conquer the land at all - they were there all along.”

(Andrew): That’s been the conclusion of the neo-minimalists—Michael Dever and Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, et all. The Israelites were indiginous to Canaan.
It makes sense to me. There is no archaeological or historical evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt or escaped…nor is there evidence of a violent conquest of Palestine.

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”—Kurt Vonnegut